


Demonym

by skeeno



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen, Intro Linguistics for Stranded Space Missions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-16 17:48:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28585998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skeeno/pseuds/skeeno
Summary: "The people Teyla met called her friends many things – Descendants, Inheritors, Imposters. She decided against exonyms, for the moment."The people who come to Atlantis don't have a name.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20





	Demonym

**Author's Note:**

> It's about that time of lockdown that we start re-watching mid-2000s sci-fi, right?

Teyla had noticed, over time, that the people who lived in Atlantis had no name.

As the person responsible for making introductions on many worlds, she chose appellations judiciously depending on her audience. Some worlds would be threatened by _Major,_ others would be skeptical of _Doctor._ Making those judgements was easy, and introducing the people was not much trouble until they actually started talking. But soon she found she could not say easily who exactly they were representatives _of._

“I think it’s a side effect of not having access to other planets while we were naming things.” Dr. McKay said when she asked after the name of their world, very early on. He scraped at his overfull bowl of cornflakes and then hummed around his spoon, philosophical as he never noticed himself to be. Major Sheppard grunted in agreement through his own food.

“The barbarians who first developed commonly spoken languages just looked down and said what they saw. Then they were all so concerned with drawing lines on maps that nobody thought about what we would call ourselves if we weren’t the only humans and the planet got stuck with getting named after dirt.” Dr. McKay said, snorting.

Teyla had been confused, and the Major had explained that the word “Earth” was not simply the error of translation Teyla had supposed it to be during previous conversations – they really did call their planet “Dirt”.

“In multiple languages, even. We say Terra and Terran to be fancy, but it just means dirt in Latin.” Major Sheppard added wryly.

“We do not say Terra, only sci-fi authors say Terra. Latin is a dead language only Catholics and Carl Linnaeus care about, and that is why Terran is a terrible name for _Earthlings_.” The Doctor shot back.

“Ugh, _Earthling._ ” Sheppard groaned.

“She asked what we call ourselves! We’re Earthlings!”

“I thought we were _Tau’ri_ , technically.”

“I don’t agree with the SGC that we should call ourselves what the Goa’uld called us while they were enslaving us and carting our ancestors off to different planets.” McKay said with finality. “Earthlings is what we call _ourselves._ I didn’t say I like it, but it’s what we say.”

The difference ended up being largely academic, like most of Dr. McKay and Major Sheppard’s differences in opinion. Bringing up a world that the residents of the city could not speak to and did not speak for would overcomplicate things, so Teyla usually stuck with “those who dwell in the City of the Ancestors.” Not that they called it that.

“I suppose you could call us _Atlanteans_. Or hey, the planet is called _Lantea-_ ” Dr. McKay – Rodney – said, laughing and wiggling his fingers like there was something funny about “Atlantean” that Teyla wasn’t catching.

“Yeah, but we’re not _from_ here. We’re the Atlantis Expedition, just call us that _._ ” Major Sheppard – John – retorted.

Teyla tried it on their next world and got only blank looks.

Over time, she learned that everyone in the city did belong to peoples which had names for themselves. It was simply that their people were not each other. John, along with Aidan, Elizabeth, and many of the soldiers, was _American,_ with their complicated quartered patch _._ Rodney, along with a much smaller contingent, was _Canadian_ , with their leaf emblem _._ John was additionally _Virginian,_ and Rodney, though she was sworn not to tell John, was from many places, because he was an _Army Brat._

But they weren’t anything else, anything they shared, besides something they did not have a name for.

“In linguistics, we call that a demonym. A name for a group of people who live in a particular place." Elizabeth mused when Teyla explained the problem. "An endonym is something that a group calls themselves, their location, or their language. An exonym is the same thing as described by others. If the problem is that we lack an endonym that distinguishes us from Earth itself, are we gaining an exonym? That might be more useful, if you can use that. After all, Dr. Beckett doesn’t go around introducing himself as being from Alba, even though that’s the native word for Scotland.”

Teyla thought that perhaps he should, but that was neither here for there. The people Teyla met called her friends many things – Descendants, Inheritors, Imposters. She decided against exonyms, for the moment.

She did, however, begin to say _Atlantis. Of Atlantis._

She also said _we_.

Then.

She might have heard Rodney say it first, or it may have just been the first time she noticed, months after he had joked about it.

“We, that is, the Lanteans-” he said, gesturing to all four of them, John, Teyla, Ronon, and himself, and the _Aoithe_ to whom he was speaking nodded in understanding.

She tried it out in conversation with John on the flight back to the gate. “- seemed excited at the prospect of a Lantean alliance-” she said, and he just grunted in agreement around a bite of powerbar, taking no notice of the appellation.

Teyla never did decide what people from Earth called themselves. Their _endonym_. But Teyla supposed that the Lanteans were not really Earthlings anymore.


End file.
